Clever Photoshops Defeat Space and Time to Expose Hidden Worlds

It’s easy to make fake photos with Photoshop. It’s harder to do what Franck Allais does: make fake photos that say something real about everyday life.

His delivery truck photos show static street scenes with the sum of ads that have driven by on trucks that day just floating about the road. His pedestrian photos capture people walking and returning from work or errands in the same scene, facing off with themselves.

“I like the challenge of making something interesting out of something ordinary,” says Allais, who is originally from France but is now based in London.

To make the delivery truck photos, Allais set his tripod up and snapped photos of any trucks that passed by in a 15- to 20-minute period. Back at home he cut out the trucks in Photoshop and then layered the photos together, creating a word scramble in the middle of the street.

“Really I’m just trying to get people to question what they normally see,” he says. “It becomes almost poetic.”

For the pedestrian photos, Allais sat in the window of his home and photographed people walking down his quiet residential street. Many of them, it turns out, were on their way to run an errand so he snapped another picture with them heading home.

In Photoshop he then combined the two photos so the subjects are facing themselves on the sidewalk.

It’s a subtle concept that rewards a careful viewing. In one photo, for example, a woman is carrying a small Rastafarian-colored hat as she walks down the right side of the frame. As she returns on the left side of the frame she’s walking with what appears to be her son who is now wearing that hat.

Allais says he loves the hat detail because it represents a moment that we would have otherwise ignored unless we saw the two frames combined.

“If you were going to try and make that story up your brain would never go there,” he says. “That’s what I love about the series I’m working on. If you take pictures in the same place you learn a lot about everyday life.”

The second part of Allais’ three-part series is probably the most visually approachable. In it, businessmen walk around the streets of London on women’s legs.

Allais didn’t want to comment on the production details but did say that none of the people were cloned in. All the subjects were shot where they stand.

While not obvious, Allais says this series was also about the little details. While watching people walk around the streets for hours on end he says he began to notice certain trends. Women, for example, usually walked closer to the buildings, using them like shields, while men were happy to walk in the middle of the sidewalk or down the street.

“I like the challenge or working with what I have,” he says. “We overlook the everyday but if we stop for a minute it can be quite interesting.”

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